


One

by hope27



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 06:49:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2498570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hope27/pseuds/hope27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver visits Felicity at her new office with a long-overdue cup of coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hey guys! So I wrote this awhile back when we heard we were going to get a coffee callback. I really wanted a scene between Oliver and Felicity with this, but alas...so here's my fix.
> 
> (Also, there are a few things different than the episode because of the fact that I wrote it before the episode aired. I hope you still think it's in character for them.)
> 
> As always, I love to know what you guys think! Thanks for your support!

She’d barely been at work for more than an hour, trying to get her bearings in a new job in a building that held so many memories. 

As much as she loved being in an office of her own again, with a title and her name on the door, it still didn’t feel right. Not that she didn’t belong here. She knew she did. Knew she’d earned this job with her own skills and resume, but it wasn’t with the right person. 

To be sitting in an office with Oliver’s name on the side of the building but Oliver no where in sight felt wrong. She kept expecting him to show up, peeking his head around the corner, asking her for the files she’d placed in the middle of his desk not thirty minutes prior.

Despite her feelings towards her old job as his executive assistant, she couldn’t deny that it had been nice - fun even - to spend her days with two of her best friends. 

Of course, there had been moments where she’d needed a personal day - or week - when it came to Oliver Queen, but it had never lasted for too long and she’d found herself missing him and John more often than not since she’d started her string of small jobs and finally landed here.

Back at Queen Consolidated. With another man’s name on the door.

It just felt wrong.

Her stomach churned once more at the feeling as if she was somehow betraying Oliver, even though they’d discussed this - last night when she found him sitting on the steps to her townhouse - and he’d even begrudgingly admitted that he wanted her to take the job (because she deserved it) as much as she knew she needed the job.

Having a regular nine to five job helped make sure she could be at the Foundry at nights for her other job - the one she felt was her true job. Helping Oliver and Diggle fight crime - take down criminal after criminal who tried to overrun the streets of Starling - that was the best part of her day.

So she was here, sitting at a large desk, Palmer Technology’s emblazoned on the multiple computer screens in front of her. It had been one of her demands - she needed the technology to do the job - nothing but the best he could give her.

Even the familiar hum of the CPU’s behind her didn’t sound quite right and the gnawing in her stomach grew.

Slipping her heels off beneath her desk, she curled one leg underneath her as she continued to rummage through the files, trying to make sense of programs left by her predecessor. It was a mess, to say the least.

She felt a headache starting to grow, a sharp pain beginning at her temple, and lifted her fingers from the keyboard to her forehead, rubbing gentle circles into her temple, her eyes fluttering shut.

It was the comforting aroma of coffee that made her eyes pop open just in time to see a familiar hand place a steaming cup from her favorite coffee shop on the desk in front of her.

A smile tugged at her lips as her head flew up and met the gorgeous blues of the man she’d just been thinking about minutes earlier.

He stood before her, dressed his brown leather jacket and jeans, one hand stuffed in his pocket as he gazed down at her with a hesitant smile of his own.

His eyes were filled with concern and a slight apprehension that made her heart flutter.

“Oliver,” she breathed, trying to hide the catch in her voice that she knew he heard.

Her happiness to see him could not be hidden, and slowly the apprehension faded away, the concern lingering even as his smile broadened.

Eagerly, she took the coffee and lifted it to her lips, savoring the hot liquid as it rolled across her tongue and down her throat.

She gave off a contented hum, and relaxed back into her chair. “This is exactly what I needed…”

When she opened her eyes, she found him still staring at her, the darkening of his gaze not lost on her as they both heard the underlying meaning of her words.

She didn’t bother to clarify, knowing it was true. 

It wasn’t just the coffee that she needed to see - a familiar face - his face allowed some of the tension to ease out of her frame. Despite the uneven ground they were on at the moment in their relationship, he was still one of the most important people in her life, and she knew he felt the same.

“Thank you,” she murmured, wrapping both hands around the warm cup as he pulled one of the chairs on the opposite side of her desk closer and took a seat, leaning forward.

“I figured it was long overdue on my part,” he stated, his voice strained to her ears, and she knew this was hard for him - being back in this building - maybe even seeing her here…

“You know I didn’t want to take this job...I mean, when I accepted it, I was angry and upset, but still...if there had been another way…” she began but he immediately sat forward, covering her hands with one of his own. 

“Don’t apologize,” he rasped. “This is what I you needed to do. You deserve this and more.”

His last two words were barely above a whisper, but she heard them, and her fingers shifted behind his own, turning from their place against the warm cup to grasp his.

“So do you,” she managed as she swallowed, thinking about the fact that they were talking about so much more than just her job and Queen Consolidated.

She watched as the sadness swept into his gaze, flooding the blue pools with a haunting look that she wanted to erase with her words and touch, but knew he’d made up his mind, for now.

A deep ache settled in her chest and she closed her eyes to try to get her emotions under control. He’d made his decision - this was what he thought he had to do. They couldn’t…no matter how much it hurt.

Her fingernails dug into his skin as she tightened her grip and she heard him shift, and then both of his hands had enveloped hers and when she opened her eyes, he was staring at her with the same longing and sadness she felt deep within her heart.

Drawing in a long breath, she blinked back the tears pressing against the back of her eyes and let out a long, shaky breath.

Her lips quirked up into a small smile trying to push forward and not focus on the past. He returned the gesture, a moment of understanding passing between them, without a word.

It was the sound of her computer beeping that made her jump, her head flying towards the screens to see that one of her file transfers had finished.

Oliver cleared his throat, his hands slipping from hers, bringing her attention back to him. “I’m going to find Thea and bring her home,” he stated, gaze fluttering to the floor and then back to her. “It’s time she came home.”

Felicity sucked in a long breath and then nodded, knowing he’d do this as soon as she’d been able to track down her location.

The new information had popped up last night and she’d seen his restlessness on the subject when she’d left a few hours later.

“Alone?” she finally asked, frowning.

One side of his mouth twisted up in a wry grin and he tilted his head to the side, “I’ll be okay, Felicity.”

She let out an exasperated huff, rising from her seat as she braced two hands on the desk, “Right, because you going to face off against Merlyn by yourself has always been so successful in the past,” she hissed.

The knot of worry began to tighten in her chest as the facts sank into her. Finding out Merlyn wasn’t dead had been a shock to all of them, but the effect on Oliver had her beyond concerned. She knew their history and the fact that his sister was with the man, was only pushing his guilt and self-loathing up to uncharted notches in the Oliver Queen scale. Going to confront both Thea and the other man alone, did not bode well at all, and there was no way she wasn’t going to put up a fight to that.

Oliver stiffened at her words, eyes flashing with something akin to anger, but he deflated a second later, his jaw set as he sank back into the chair.

“What do you want me to do, Felicity?” he asked quietly.

Felicity had a million and one different answers to that question, but most of them had nothing to do with Thea and Malcolm Merlyn.

She sighed, biting down on her lower lip as she looked at him. 

Finally, she leveled him with a look. “Take Roy. I know you don’t want Digg to go with Lyla and the baby at home, but you can’t go alone and I can’t go with you right now, but, Oliver, you can’t do this by yourself.”

He’d tensed at Roy’s name, and she anticipated his argument. “Roy might be able to persuade her better than you can. He loves her and I have a feeling Thea still loves him. Those feelings just don’t go away,” she trailed off, swallowing on the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.

Oliver’s eyes cut to hers and she saw the recognition, and answering heartache in them.

“He feels responsible too,” she continued after she’d regained her voice. “Take him with you.”

Her tone brooked no argument and as much as she knew he wanted to challenge that - fight against it - he gritted his teeth and finally nodded.

She slumped back onto her heels and sighed. “Thank you.”

Oliver nodded as he rose, fingers rubbing against his thumb as he held her gaze.

All the air seemed to disappear from the room and for seconds, she couldn’t breath, as he looked at her. So many emotions swimming the depths of his blue eyes - emotions that she too felt to the very core of her being.

Flashes of their date together, the way his arms felt around her and his lips against hers. She could still feel the warmth of his tongue against hers, and it made her knees weak thinking about the way her body responded to his in a way she’d never felt before with anyone else.

Her heart cried out for him - the one that fit so perfectly with hers.

Seconds stretched into minutes until he finally set his jaw and turned towards the door.

Her fingernails bit into her palms, and just as he was reaching for the door handle, the words tumbled from her lips.

“Please come back to me.”

His body stilled and then turned. His face had fallen, lines creased into his brow as if her words had hit him square in the chest and caused him to stumble to find his balance.

She was around her desk and in front of him in her barefeet before he’d taken more than one step back towards her desk.

He caught her against him, her arms winding their way around his neck as he lifted her up. She rested her face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in, letting herself have this one moment to truly grieve for what she was missing. A silent sob shook her body and he felt it, holding her closer. She felt his shoulders tremble in response, turning his face into her hair and mumbling her name in one long, slow breath.

Felicity matched her breathing to his own, his chest rising and falling beneath hers. She counted his heartbeats, listening to the familiar sound and letting it wash over her. There was nothing that soothed her quite the way that hearing Oliver’s heartbeat did. Her computer servers were a close second - for a long time her number one - until she’d felt his heartbeat beneath her hand the first night she’d found out his secret. It calmed her despite the situation, and she thought it a fluke, until she felt it again, when he held her close as they swung across an elevator shaft, and then again when he’d rescued her from a landmine. It wasn’t until she held onto his hand, refusing to let him give up after they’d found him half-dead after fighting Cyrus Gold that she realized it for what it was - her heart listening to it’s other half. Hearing the sound of his heart working, continuing to pump blood through his veins, calmed her more than anything ever could.

She felt his hands travel up and down her back as he took deep long breaths, and she did the same until she began to step back.

He tightened his hold on her momentarily, and then released her, his arms traveling down hers to find her hands.

Her eyes met his, and she saw the promise in them. I’ll do everything I can to come back….to you.

With a deep breath, she nodded, her lips ticking upward. “Thanks again for the coffee.”

Bending down, he brushed a kiss against her hair. “One,” he breathed, and she chuckled.

The smile that twisted his lips upwards had her heart aching in the best way as he opened her door and disappeared around the corner.

She didn’t see him again for four long days. He’d called and texted a few times needing her help and giving her updates. And, she’d, of course, kept tabs on them.

Then, one night at the Foundry, she heard his familiar footfalls on the stairs. They slowed and then stopped as they reached the bottom, and she twirled in her chair, relief flooding her when she saw him. A bag slung over his shoulder, brown leather jacket fitted to his body, and a soft smile etched onto his face, even with the familiar look of longing.

Digg came in a few minutes later, having gone with Oliver and Roy, at Lyla’s urging, and to Felicity’s relief. 

She smiled at them both, letting out a long breath, happy to have her family back together.

Oliver touched the back of her chair as he came by, his eyes never leaving hers as they sat down, debriefing her on everything that had happened.

There was a long road in front of them, but something in her heart told her they’d make it to the end, and a new road - one they’d be on together.


End file.
